Incentive Programs Put Things in Perspective, Part I
When you have your head down doing a job day in and day out, you oftentimes lose perspective of what it is that you are doing. I had been doing my job for so many years that I have to admit that I was on autopilot - going through my day with little more thought than driving down a straight highway. I knew what to do and how to do it and that was all I thought about - nothing more and nothing less. Incentive programs, however, changed all that.
When our company instituted an employee recognition program, I had no idea what it was or how it worked. I know it sounded good but I thought it was just another way for management to say “thank you” without it really meaning anything. We had gone several years without bonuses but the economy was what it was and I was just happy to have a job to be honest. The employee program, however, turned out to be so much more than I thought it was.
So here’s how it worked. Management put together a goal board and told us what they were trying to accomplish over the next several months. They broke it down into short term goals and long term goals - achieving such and such over the next couple of weeks means meeting this monthly goal and meeting this monthly goal means putting us in the position of reaching our yearly goal and so on. Of course a great year for the company meant bonuses and jobs for us so we were all for it, plus it was nice to see - on paper - what we were all working to achieve. Then they told us about the incentives that we would be eligible for if we reached particular goals and that’s where things got really interesting. More in the next post…
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